Surprisingly the strangest thing about my new physiology was not my actual superpowers. Something that was stranger, to me anyway, than my actual superpowers was the real-life heads-up display through which I viewed the world.
The real-life heads-up display was an incredibly useful thing that in the time since I had acquired it had proven its useful to me time and time again. With it, I was able to show the world an eerie level of attention to detail and that had helped me do things like more swiftly master basic-level magic and even adjust battle strategies in the middle of battle. At the moment my heads-up display was focused on Joshua, carefully and detailedly studying the man.
Information such as the man's blood type, his heartbeat, his birthday, and more was on display whenever I focused on him. With but a glance I could also see his thoughts displayed above his head in the form of comic-book style thought bubbles that unobtrusively formed around him. His thoughts were rather predictable. He was curious as to what the conditions that I sought to impose on him in exchange for my purchase of the building were. I smiled at him and began to inform him of my purposes.
"Joshua, I seek to begin a technological company in Honduras. And to start things off I want to bring over my initial team of scientists, researchers, and inventors over here. But I need to find housing for them. In exchange for my purchase of the building, you must both move out the current tenants of the building, as well as find them adequate housing elsewhere." I told the man, before taking another sip of the tea in front of me. The man's eyes widened in shock as he listened to my rather intense condition.
"Nathan... This building is over thirty stories tall. Dozens, almost a hundred people live here. You expect me to find housing for all of them?!" He asked me, sounding rather flabbergasted at the thought of such intense labor. I grinned at him and nodded, and as I put down the cup I held in one hand I opted to do something rather surprising. To reveal just a bit of my hand.
"Yes, Joshua. I do. Because I have big plans and in order for those big plans to come to fruition I need a space like this. A... lair, here, in this world." I uttered in fluent, practically accentless Spanish. As I spoke my words grew colder. At the end of my statement, I rose my other hand and pointed a single finger to the sky, before willing a small fire to appear above it.
The fire floated freely and burned a cold blue. Joshua stared at it and was shocked into speechlessness for a moment as he took in the strange sight before him. I gazed at the man, studying his quickening heartbeat curiously, before next speaking.
"I need partners here. I intend for one such partner to be you. And I will make my partners very wealthy." I explained, before raising another finger and conjuring a sphere of absolute darkness above it, a wicked, almost living darkness that seemed to move on its own, hungrily.
"I will make it worth your while if you do as I ask." I revealed, honestly. I intended to always do right by my partners and those who worked for me. Joshua's eyes were focused on the fire and on the weird sphere of darkness that bubbled and moved around over my finger.
"What... What is that?" Joshua asked as he stared at the two supernatural sights before him. I chuckled and closed my eyes, before opening them and revealing that they had changed, becoming colorless orbs of angelic light. During the time since I had begun the cult, I had opted to focus on a few distinctive things.
One of the distinctive things I had opted to focus on was the rapid acquisition of physiology powers, and so I had acquired the ones that were available to me; the elemental physiologies, the basic physiologies of a vampire, a demon, and an angel. And at the moment I was channeling some of my angelic power, causing my eyes to subtly shift and for a pair of translucent, feathered wings to jut from my back. Joshua saw them and gasped.
"Nathan... What are you?" He asked me, in a mixture of awe and fear. I had found, in the rare moments that I utilized the appearance components of my physiology powers, that they tended to inspire both awe and fear in humans. The fact that Joshua was so susceptible to the appearance of an angel was fascinating to me since he did not live a particularly pious life.
"I am a friend. A business partner." I explained, opting to retain some of the mystery behind my identity, as I quipped to the man with a smile on my face.
"You're... a friend?" He asked me, curiously. I chuckled and smiled at him, and activated one of the passive abilities bestowed upon me by my potent mastery of the "Charm" attribute. As I did I watched the man's face relax and sensed his sudden relief as he believed my words. The passive ability I had just activated was one that strengthened the impact of my words when I was truthful. It was a natural complement to a power I possessed that allowed me to be believed whenever I was truthful, and I had used it periodically since acquiring it a few days ago. In moments like this, it was perfect.
"You could say I am your best friend. Or rather that I will become your best friend." I stated, with the sort of natural confidence that could only be possessed by someone who was either absolutely certain of the future or had prodigious natural wisdom. My words further relaxed Joshua and caused the man to relax in front of me. And at that very moment, I sensed something subtle awaken within someone, something that I recognized since I possessed one as well; a minor spark of arcane power. A minor spark which, like all minor sparks, could one day become something more.
Miles away from where Nathan sat, a young woman, one of Nathan's acquaintances was approached by a waitress. The young woman, a classmate of Nathan's, currently wore the recommended uniform given to most volunteers on days when they go into some of the most dangerous barrios in the city.
The waitress who approached her was a middle-aged woman with soft brown hair and green eyes. She had a smile on her face when she reached the teenager and had a small server book in her hand. The item was rather American, but the waitress was a consummate professional and quite liked the handy item she had been given a long time ago. She politely asked the teenager for her order, and the teen, quickly asked for a simple meal. And when the waitress turned around and walked away, she inadvertently set off a series of events that would change Mirella's life.
The two were inside the outdoor patio of a small restaurant in a once unsafe corner of the city. Neither of them knew the true cause of the city's recent "good luck", and if they had known the cause of it it was likely that neither would believe the actual source of the city's change of fortune. However, as incredible as Nathan was, even he would struggle to protect the city from every single unfortunate accident. And even his abilities had their limits. One such limit was that there was little he could do to address the city's infrastructure.
Tegucigalpa's infrastructure was far from bad, all things considered, but older neighborhoods like the one where Mirella was currently volunteering were often lacking as far as infrastructure went. One example of the shoddy infrastructure of the city's oldest, and previously, the least safe, neighborhoods was that the wiring connecting the ceiling fan of the patio was barely holding on when the restaurant's owner arrived that morning to open the establishment up. And in the moments before Mirella's arcane spark roared to life, the wiring holding the fan up was on its last legs.
The very instant that the waitress walked underneath the ceiling fan, the last bit of wiring that had been connected to both the building and the fan snapped, causing the fan to dramatically drop onto the woman. The thing fell with a loud groan, and crashed into the woman, causing her mangled form to hit the ground hard. And at the moment that that happened, Mirella's heart began to beat harder than it ever had.
Deep within the powerful young woman, a series of shocking changes occurred with extremely rapid speeds. Her arcane spark roared to life within the depths of her soul, setting her conceptual essence ablaze and causing her body to undergo subtle but meaningful changes. Her once mundane eyes began to glow a strange shade of violet, her mind began to fill with the barest knowledge of the simplest ways to use her powers, and all at once, her senses exploded in potency.
Mirella was undergoing what scientists in other universes, universes with power-wielding beings, had long dubbed "A traumatic awakening", which was a sort of emotional event in which one's latent powers forcefully awoke and were initially molded in ways that tethered them to the event their possessor witnessed or endured. In Mirella's case her fear, her shock, and her adrenaline were tethered to her powers. But more than just being afraid, Mirella was a woman of action.
Mirella's training, the training that she had received as a volunteer first responder, propelled her into action. She immediately, almost on sheer reflex, got out of her seat and dashed towards the now painfully groaning and screaming waitress. She visually scanned the woman as she moved, her vision sharper than ever before, and her powers brilliantly coming to life within her, visually roaring as they flared to life in the form of surrounding her with a rainbow-colored regenerative aura.
The woman was a powerful possessor of a dynamic arcane spark, one that bestowed her with a rare form of magic; will-magic. As she dashed towards the woman she sought to help, to provide emergency first-aid for, her magic surged out of her body, creating a sort of forcefield that, distantly, became strong enough to alert Nathan to the strange reality that there was another magic-wielder within the city. The forcefield also reached the ceiling fan and pushed the thing off of the woman it had fallen onto, and then began to touch her.
Mirella's powerful magic served as an arcane sedative to the mundane waitress. The wailing woman, who had been severely hurt by the ceiling fan, began to feel the pain that ravaged her dull as Mirella's aura enveloped her. The pain didn't disappear, but it dulled enough for rational thought to begin to return to the woman, allowing her to gaze upon the face of the woman responsible for the abatement of the pain; Mirella.
The waitress was the very first person in the world to see Mirella be surrounded by rainbow-tinted air. She smiled, deliriously, as the volunteer dashed towards her. When Mirella reached her, the young woman fell to her knees beside the waitress, and was about to begin to administer emergency aid, when she heard a powerful inner voice, the inner voice of her own magically charged subconscious, call out to her.
"Stop. Stop and think. Do not ignore the impossibilities you just saw." The voice commanded, causing the volunteer to freeze up and gaze at the wrecked remains of the ceiling fan. They were embedded in the walls of the restaurant, having been sent flying away by her forcefield. Mirella froze as she gazed at the shattered remains of the fan, and as the restaurant's chef and owner began to peer out into the patio from the inside of the establishment, specifically as he gazed at the fan, embedded in the cheap stone wall of his place of business.
"Now listen... You can heal her." The voice from deep within Mirella whispered, its voice calming the young woman enough for her to shake her head and gaze down at the hurt woman in front of her.
"I... How?" She asked the voice, speaking to it aloud, causing the delirious waitress to smile at the teen and attempt to tell her to relax, but all that came out were inarticulate murmurs.
"Will your energy into your hand, and then hold it over where you want to heal. Your energy responds to your will. It is an extension of you. An extension of your purpose. Make your purpose be the healing of others." The voice of the personification of her inner self commanded. It was a mighty voice in the woman's ear and mind, a voice that possessed the raw power to drown out distractions. And so Mirella closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As she did, she mentally commanded the energy that had been surging out of her to come into her hand.
The young woman's energy froze, and for the briefest of instants, she felt time slow to what felt like a crawl as all of her energy began to do as she commanded. For the young woman that single attosecond felt like an hour, stretched out as thinly and as longly as possible due to the total refocusing of her body at her behest. And then she felt her senses dull, as every atom, every cell, in her body focused on her hand and awaited her command.
"And now... Heal." She whispered as she visualized the broken body of the woman, crushed by the ceiling fan and further damaged by how hard she hit the floor, begin to heal. And then her energy responded to her, doing as she ordered with a weird sort of practiced ease. Mirella felt her own body begin to grow tired, she felt exhaustion seep into her bones, and her senses alerted her to the impossible reaction of the waitress's body as her energy poured out of her and into the woman.
The woman's own natural healing was sped up, as bones were mended and organs were healed. As Mirella lost her own energy, the waitress's body began to be mended, and even damage done to the woman's heart and ribcage were supernaturally undone, their prior functionality restored at the cost of Mirella's own stamina. Mirella began to breathe raggedly, but the waitress began to return to her senses, her mind filling with vigor and with an awareness that she was being healed. And so she began to reach up, to grab the tired teenager responsible for saving her life.
It was at that moment that the restaurant owner, alerted to the other scene in his own restaurant by a startled gasp from the waitress, turned and saw Mirella's form sitting over his employee, as his employee reached up to catch a slowly dropping Mirella. And he gasped as he saw something he would have never believed was possible; a miracle. He watched the waitress's body recover from the potent damage done to it, scars and wounds vanishing as skin rapidly grew and filled in places where the fan had penetrated her.
Meanwhile, a clone of Nathan's distantly observed this event from atop the roof of a nearby building. That particular clone of the young man had only arrived on the scene in the wake of Mirella's aura flaring to life and pushing away the ceiling fan.
As the true Nathan closed the deal he was making with the notorious businessman Joshua Orlando, this clone watched the sudden and inspiring awakening of Mirella. He stood ready to intervene but wanted to watch things play out on their own rather than rush in and save the day unless he thought it necessary to do so.
This clone of Nathan's may not have had Nathan's non-Changeling-powers, but between his ability to wield the machines that inhabited each of Nathan's bodies, his changeling powers, and his physiology abilities, he could have done everything from fly, to heal, with practiced ease. Fortunately, it seemed quite clear that his intervention was unnecessary.
Even as Mirella began to slump over from exhaustion, it was obvious that both the waitress and the restaurant's owner were grateful to their unusual savior, and even without mind-reading Nathan's clone could tell that neither of the two witnesses to Mirella's awakening would attempt to exploit her. But just in case, Nathan stood ready, a silent observer and a powerful protector that would allow non-dangerous events to play out naturally.
